Thursday, May 04, 2006
10:26 PM
I have a drawer in my room which keeps all the 'sentimentalia' of my life so far; letters and cards that I've recieved from friends, angel mortal messages during JC, rejection letters from girls that I used to like (not kidding, I actually have rejection letters... you see, a simple and amiable 'no' didn't convince me, I had to provoke them till they had to explain what 'no' really meant in concise detail), and many other things which I cannot bear to throw away.
And then, when I reached the bottom of my drawer, I found something that caused my heart to leap with joy and nostalgia. Something I thought I've lost forever, because I lost all my soft copy versions of it, and I forgot that I had kept that ONE PRECIOUS hard copy version of it in my drawer. It's none other than our 2L History Drama Script! Yes! That one about the Singapore Police Force!!!
Back in Secondary 2, there was this event, involving the 4 'special' schools of our time, called the History Drama. Each school was to come up with a skit (some, like ours, despite being the smallest school among the special four, came up with TWO!) that had to do with any aspect of Singapore History. Then the skits would be judged and three winners would be picked. So, armed with lots of ideas, enthusiasm, and zero experience in stage productions, 25 (or so) of us produced and directed two ten-minute long skits, script, props and all from scratch in 5 months.
I forgot how I ended up being the scriptwriter, but I was supposed to write a skit about the brief history of the Singapore Police Force from Raffles' time to now. So I had this crazy idea, and took about 4 months to cough up 4 pages of rhyme. The idea was that the whole skit, narration and dialogue, was to fit seamlessly into the rhythm of the rhyme, without any breaks in between. So after I finished the 4 pages of rhyme, three of us went to a certain President's Scholar's house, and the four of us spent the whole day there coming up with stage directions that would fit the rhyme's structure and rhythm.
And then when we finally got down to actually rehearsing, we found out how messy the script really was. We had a hard time trying to synchronise all the stage directions to the rhyme. The actors literally had to run in and out of the stage in order to keep up with the rhyme. And because of the nature of the script, we had like... twenty over different characters (every character had an average screen time of about... 20 seconds), and there were only less than ten of us who were acting. So each person had to play about three to four roles, or more.
Luckily for us, we decided to record almost all the narration and dialogue, so all the actors needed to do was to listen for their cue, come in and lip-synch. Every now and then, though, there'd be actual shouting of some lines by the actors on stage.
So within a few weeks, we made all the necessary props and managed to somehow turn that mess into a proper skit. With regards to the props, I distinctly remember making this huge palm-shaped (as in our hand, not the plant) styrofoam fly-swatter that Chunsz (who was playing a policeman) used to swing at CK (the thief) in one of the scenes where the lines went 'Transformed the originally crime laden land/ Into a place under the strong and mighty hand/ Of justice, to make it a land of peace/ So that trading and profits will increase'. (Get it? The fly-swatter is supposed to be the Hand of justice!)
In the end, because we were one of the last teams to perform the play to the judges on the day itself, the backstage was extremely cluttered and messy by the time it was our turn. We could hardly walk. And that's the real reason why we didn't get first.
Nor second.
Nor third.
Most of us (I believe) from our class will tell you that we would've at least gotten a third or a second if we had started first, because we knew our final rehearsal was better than what we saw from the other schools. We got to perform it again to our own school for the next Monday Assembly, and that performance with the clutter-free backstage would've bagged us first prize.
Really.
...
So, it seems, six years down the road, what I remember most vividly about my secondary school days is this madcap adventure that lasted for a few months.
Well, to write extensively only about the History Drama would be a grevious injustice to the trove of stories that my drawer of letters and notes tell. I've been extremely blessed to have undergone such an eventful and truly purposeful education (despite the fact that our country seems to be making every effort at every turn to screw up the local education system) so far. Not to mention the people that I've had the fortune of knowing. This small anecdote about the exciting History Drama is just the icing on the cake; the tip of the iceberg. It is a joy just to think about those good old days.
So now I have a problem: To have had led such a meaningful life in my secondary school and junior college days only serve to make it harder for my future life in university and beyond to match up to the past; it would be harder for me to 'move on' in life. It was the best time in my life only because the present is not as good as the past. And should my life become more meaningful in university, it would only raise the bar and make my working life and beyond even harder to be as joyful. Surely everyday can't be the best day of my life?
And, would I thus wish that I didn't have such a memorable time and education in my impressionable years? Definitely not, for isn't it is better to have loved and lost, than not to have loved at all? Yet what is the point of tasting love if it is temporal, and would probably serve to bring more misery than joy? Surely there's an answer to this difficult question that nostalgia poses?
...
Sigh, I am starting to miss school, 2 months after I ORD.
Comments:
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9 comment)
Man! Junior college was "meaningful" for ya?
Haha! No- u didnt scare me in the middle of the night. I am quite used to being scared/ surprised by lots of things... And my body isnt allowing me to recover soon... I cough as if I have TB- just that instead of lots of blood- I get streaks here and there ( FYI to gross u out)
Script writer! Haha! Cool eh?
Anyway- uni days are fun lah! Better than JC really! Well for me lah. So put ur seat belts on, you are going for an exciting ride of your life!
Haha! No- u didnt scare me in the middle of the night. I am quite used to being scared/ surprised by lots of things... And my body isnt allowing me to recover soon... I cough as if I have TB- just that instead of lots of blood- I get streaks here and there ( FYI to gross u out)
Script writer! Haha! Cool eh?
Anyway- uni days are fun lah! Better than JC really! Well for me lah. So put ur seat belts on, you are going for an exciting ride of your life!
# posted by 
: 3:55 AM
: 3:55 AM
Man! Junior college was "meaningful" for ya?
Haha! No- u didnt scare me in the middle of the night. I am quite used to being scared/ surprised by lots of things... And my body isnt allowing me to recover soon... I cough as if I have TB- just that instead of lots of blood- I get streaks here and there ( FYI to gross u out)
Script writer! Haha! Cool eh?
Anyway- uni days are fun lah! Better than JC really! Well for me lah. So put ur seat belts on, you are going for an exciting ride of your life!
Haha! No- u didnt scare me in the middle of the night. I am quite used to being scared/ surprised by lots of things... And my body isnt allowing me to recover soon... I cough as if I have TB- just that instead of lots of blood- I get streaks here and there ( FYI to gross u out)
Script writer! Haha! Cool eh?
Anyway- uni days are fun lah! Better than JC really! Well for me lah. So put ur seat belts on, you are going for an exciting ride of your life!
# posted by : 3:55 AM
: 3:55 AM
Michael Lee please do not spam this comment section. Haha..
Hmmm..yea I agree, Uni life is much much better than JC, for me that is. Hehe.
Well, read your blog and thought it sorta ended at the climax..Hehe..
Wilbur
Hmmm..yea I agree, Uni life is much much better than JC, for me that is. Hehe.
Well, read your blog and thought it sorta ended at the climax..Hehe..
Wilbur
# posted by : 4:49 PM
: 4:49 PM
hey i vaguely remember that police drama, haha. well i'm sorry we got first in the end - i don't know how, it was a ridiculous spoof of the founding of singapore but all good fun. and oh i had to borrow a bougainvillea plant from your school compound... maybe that helped to clutter up the backstage :) anyway, good memories indeed! i loved ours too, and the rehearsals, all side splitting. i got to play farquhar, the one with a nice name. yeah. long emails again sometime soonish. - zn
# posted by : 3:17 AM
: 3:17 AM
haha hey can type and send me e script sometime? remz e crazy fun we had and no matter wat ppl say, i muz say sec sch days r e best for me. uni is like exciting, but not quite crazy like our sec sch times :P
see you in NUS too, ynner!!! except... i don't know who you are... so who're you? hehe...
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# posted by : 7:39 AM
: 7:39 AM